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Sunday, September 25, 2016

Trimming down "Afternoon Delight" blocks...

Call me old-fashioned, and mostly I would agree with you. There are a lot of new-fangled, modern quilting shortcuts that I embrace whole-heartedly.

But when it comes down to trimming hand-applique blocks, I prefer to be safe than sorry. Especially when I am trimming down to an unusual size for which I don't own a plexiglass ruler.

Even though I still have handful of Sue Garman's "Afternoon Delight" applique blocks yet to stitch, I just could not wait to start trimming them to the unfinished size of 7-1/4 inches square.

I have a 7-inch and 7-1/2-inch commercial ruler, but no 7-1/4-inch size. I made my own plastic template with lots of drawn lines to make it easy to find the center and line up the corners.

Because I have a tendency to slip when rotary cutting (especially when I am nervous trimming hand applique work), I got the template where I wanted it, then piled on my vintage pattern weights (I use them on the commercial square rulers, too!!).

Then, I draw around the template with my ultra-fine sharpie (or a Pigma pen).

Next I cut out my block using scissors to the inside of the ink mark.

Ta-da! Yes, I know slicing and dicing with the rotary cutter would have been quicker, but I am completely confident with this method. I typically watch movies or TV while I am working, and it is easy for me to make a terrible rotary mistake while trimming. This old-fashioned, but sure method keeps me from hopping around the house, swearing...

I have been having trouble with Blogger...may be related to using Chrome as my browser. I have not been getting email comments from all of you, which makes it hard to reply to thank you or answer your questions...SORRY! And it makes me cranky.

Then, when I started this post 2 days ago, I could not upload photos. MORE crankiness. I just posted this using Internet Explorer. It uploaded my photos, we will see if I get your comments emailed to me. I want to do a give-away of goodies, but the comment to email thing needs to work again first.

12 comments:

I have had the same problem with my blog that I use wordpress for - I used to get email notification of all comments, then suddenly about 4 months ago I stopped getting any notifications, that went on for about a week then I was getting them again. Then it started all over again about 2 months ago it started all over again. It has never settled out - now after an update I get a little symbol at the top of my blog indicating a comment I can answer the comment and the answer goes to my blog and to the person - it makes for a lot of comments piling up in my blog but nothing I can do about it. now suddenly I am getting email notification of about a third of the comments that come in to the blog - I haven't a clue what it is all about and have not been able to fix it.

Thanks for this great info, I absolutely hate trimming my blocks and make mistakes so often that I usually cut my blocks to size to begin with. Guess I need to try your method! I stopped blogging for that very reason, I was having issues in both. Getting and sending comments and finally in frustration gave up! Hope you figure out a fix for your issues.

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About Me

I'm a quilter, musician, wife, mother of a college sophmore, research biochemist (used-to-be), compulsive organizing freak, and a lover of all the history surrounding quilting. I am drawn to all forms of quilting, but particularly like to do hand applique and hand quilting, which I tend to approach with a wacky, weird sense of humor. After dabbling with pattern doodling, I'm offering some patterns for purchase through my online store (see the link above). I have recently returned to my state of origin after 25 years in the Midwest...wasn't really a Midwesterner, but not really a Southerner anymore...in limbo!